RIAA pushes anti "login sharing" legislation in Tennessee, hopes others follow

Originally published on 06/06/2011 on lubbockonline.com

Sheila Burke and Lucas L. Johnson II report in the Tennessean that Tennessee has passed legislation making it illegal to share logins to "entertainment subscription services." The article focuses on Netflix logins, but it covers any kind of entertainment subscription login - whatever that means.

According to the article Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) pushed for this bill, which makes the big focus of all the news stories - Netflix - all the stranger. The RIAA's concern would primarily be music services like Rhapsody, but the law does cover anything that could be called an "entertainment subscription service." Netflix qualifies, and sharing of logins in college dorms and by 'services' selling logins could be a problem. But is this really a big problem, or is this another case of an industry with a failing old business model looking for any excuse to explain it's problems other than the fact that old business models are changing, and businesses that won't change will fail?

The question is, how long will they be able to push legislation to prop their old, failing business model up, and how much damage will they do in that time?

Suing downloaders new "revenue stream"

First it was Warner Brothers seeking an anti piracy intern in the U.K. Now it's the US Copyright Group taking a swing at stopping movie piracy. They are not doing it at the request of the MPAA, they are doing it an a straightforward attempt to find new and interesting ways to make money.

According to an article in The Hollywood Reporter, they are using a new proprietary technology that allows realtime inspection of torrent downloads. Supposedly it's been very successful in Germany. US Copyright Group has filed tens of thousands of lawsuits, with a handful being settled already, and there could be another 30,000 filed in coming months.

This tactic didn't work for the RIAA, and hopefully it won't work here despite the new technology. Litigating shouldn't be an option to avoid having to adapt to changing market conditions.

Cost of music piracy: $2,250 per song.

Are you one of the people still sharing your music over peer to peer networks like Limewire? In the 'Threat Level' blog for Jan 22, David Kravits tell us about Jammi Thomas-Riset, who was fined 1.92 million for sharing 24 songs. That's $80,000 a song! Jammi's lawyer asked that the price be reduced. The judge agreed, and reduced it to the minimum allowed, $750 per song x 3. The judge called the original amount "shocking."

The RIAA is a fear-mongering bully, and they need to be forcd to disband and allow artists to do their thing. The premise that internet sharing reduces CD sales is hogwash, and 70's folk singer Janis Ian makes a good case for the opposite here, and Eric Flint of the Baen Free Library makes a similar case here and amplifies on it here. Ian's article is also published in "Prime Palaver" on the Baen Free Library website. Both people can demonstrate that offering things free (including having your music pirated) leads to more - not less - sales.

It's inevitable the entrenched businesses with "strategies that work" will react violently to any new model that makes their way of doing business obsolete. But it's getting old. The iTunes music store has demonstrated quite well that legal online sales are not only feasable, but can be highly lucrative. But they still want to alienate their users by suing them. I'll never understand the corporate mind.